


Silence And Songs (Day 2: Counterpart)

by ifyouwereamelody



Series: The Worlds Through Which We Weave (Zutara Week 2020) [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Brace yourselves, F/M, Forced Marriage, Zutara Week, Zutara Week 2020, betrothal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:02:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25599259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifyouwereamelody/pseuds/ifyouwereamelody
Summary: Katara is obstinate and loud and difficult. She's smart – really smart, dangerously smart – and all too thoroughly aware of it. She's irreverent of tradition ('just because that's how it's always been doesn't mean that's how it should stay'), unyielding in her principles, and has seemingly boundless reserves of confidence by which to make her opinions clear.(You made a mistake coming here, he wants to tell her, if you plan to sing quite so loudly.)(This is no place for a voice such as yours.)
Relationships: Katara & Zuko (Avatar), Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: The Worlds Through Which We Weave (Zutara Week 2020) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1853797
Comments: 9
Kudos: 80





	Silence And Songs (Day 2: Counterpart)

**Author's Note:**

> Here we are with Day 2. As I said, these are all basically one-shots, different AUs, but there is a kind of twist (?) to the whole thing. I mean, like, not really a twist, exactly, but just there's something more to it than just a bunch of standalone stories, which I hope will maybe become clear as we go but if not will be made clear in the final entry.
> 
> But also this is where the sadness begins wooooooooh
> 
> If you want something kind of rousing and fitting to use as a backdrop to this, the song I had on quite a lot was Speechless from Disney's remake of Aladdin. It feels sadly appropriate that, even though this story is from Zuko's perspective, the song that I connect the most with it works through Katara.
> 
> TW: Abuse/physical harm/blood. Reference to murder. Non-explicit suggestion of physical intimacy. Ozai is a motherfucking cockwomble. Might hurt your heart a little, because it certainly hurt mine to write idk.

When he is thirteen, Zuko protests. He speaks up.

At the time, still full of the idealistic, cloudless morals that seem to be synonymous with youth, it feels like the only thing he _can_ do. Staying silent is impossible. Unforgivable.

'Can't?'

His father's voice is quiet, curt, deadly calm as he stares Zuko down across the table. But Zuko doesn't heed the unspoken warning, his words bursting from him untamed and effervescent into the stillness of the room.

'No, you can't treat your people like tha-'

'You believe that you are in a position to tell me what I can or cannot do. Is that right?'

'I-...'

The first hints of doubt start to quiver at his lips, urging him to clamp them tight shut, but the strength of his convictions comes back loud and rash –

(Not brave. It isn't bravery when you don't know that there's anything to fear.)

– and he goes on.

'I just think, Father, that-'

' _Sir_.'

'Sorry. Sir.'

This time, he takes pause, tastes the dread in the air and swallows it down alongside the reply that's buzzing on his tongue. His father raises a brow, a curved knife-edge of a brow, and spreads his hands in a way that should look like an invitation.

Instead, it feels like a trap.

'Well? You have a point to make, do you not? Stand up and talk like a man, Zuko, don't keep us waiting.'

His legs aren't shaking. They _aren't_.

(His voice may be, just a bit.)

'It's just... It seems... _wrong_ , sir. The people- They have so little already, and they've lived on the lakeside for years, and I just- Where will they go, sir, if the land is taken for the nobility?'

His father regards him, considers, sighs so compellingly that every person in the room seems to sit a little stiffer.

'Zuko, might you remind our council how old you are?'

Zuko's eyes flicker around the table, around men and women who sit with the pursed lips and resigned eyes of those who have long since become accustomed to their own reticence.

'Thir-thirteen, sir.'

'Thirteen. Old enough to understand what the word 'insubordination' means?'

'I- Yes, sir. I think so.'

'In that case, you will understand the difficult position you put me in now.'

The sound of his father's chair scraping back across the floor grates harsh and painful across nerves that are already raw with unease, and the towering presence of the man at his full height throws Zuko into shadow.

'I am Lord of our lands. If my decisions are questioned, then what will happen? What will become of the authority by which I rule over our people?'

_Get the answer right. Get it right, and everything will be fine._

'It might be damaged, sir?'

'Indeed. And if that were to happen then would I be able to govern effectively?'

'No, sir.'

'No. So you see why insubordination is such a serious offence.'

'Yes, sir.'

Until today, Zuko had never thought of silence as something that could have weight, could take form. But his father seems to bear it as if it were a weapon, allowing it to swell until the air feels thick with it, clogged and intractable, and then cutting through the smog with a single, paralysing crack.

'The punishment is fifty lashes.'

Zuko's stomach clenches. His breath comes quick and panicked. He tries to force his voice even, to sound collected.

(He can't keep it from breaking under the tension in his jaw.)

'Sir?'

'You wish to say something else, Zuko?'

'I- Sir, I never meant-'

'If you are to speak your opinions as a man, then surely you must accept the consequences as a man as well. Do you disagree?'

'No, of course not, but I-'

He falters.

'Yes?'

_Speak. Words got you here. Maybe they can get you out again, if you choose the right ones this time._

'I apologise, sir. I never meant to speak out of place. I-... I love our nation and its citizens, sir, and I was worried that they may come to harm. I was wrong. I shouldn't have questioned you, and I won't do it again.'

'I believe you.'

Zuko sags in relief, his shoulders collapsing forwards at his father's words.

But then-

'Take him out to the courtyard.'

'Sir?'

Does he truly not understand, not comprehend the meaning behind the order, or is the lift in his voice down to the dawning horror of knowing exactly what's about to happen, trying desperately to twist it untrue?

No matter. It does nothing to stop his father's guards from marching him out of the palace doors and into the square where the lash awaits, where people start to gather at the draw of the commotion.

'Sir! Sir, please! Father, _please_! Fath-'

He stops crying out somewhere around the halfway mark –

_Twenty three._

– his voice leaking out of him with the blood that pools around his knees.

_Twenty eight._

The world narrows down to pain that is red and hot and without mercy, that steals the breath from his lungs –

_Thirty one._

– a little more with every blow –

_Thirty nine._

– until –

_Forty five._

– there is none left in him.

And when it stops, when it finally ends, he is hauled up broken and bloodied to face his punisher. Lord Ozai stands over him, lash in hand, and studies him for a moment, as if figuring out where to place the next tile in a game of pai sho.

Then the man smiles, more terrible than any scowl he could offer –

'Forty nine.'

– and strikes Zuko clean across the face.

* * *

He spends years doing penance for his crime.

(Strange, because he'd always been of the impression that the penance was in the punishment. And he was certainly punished.)

Day on day, bit by bit, he bows to the Lord's command, accepting his instructions without question no matter the humiliation and shame that they are so clearly designed to incite.

Day on day, turn by turn, he winds his jaw tighter, until nothing of any real substance could ever hope to find its way out between his teeth.

And then, when he is twenty, he is invited back to the council's table for an urgent meeting – a discussion concerning a rogue who has terrorised the citizens of the nation for years, finally captured after evading the yoriki time and time again.

Zuko offers no suggestion, no opinion. He sits, lips pursed and eyes resigned, as the conversation spirals towards its inexorable conclusion. The council members agree that they will offer the man full freedom to stand supreme above the lower classes, unchecked in all his gleeful cruelty, on the basis that he provides them with information – snippets and morsels about any citizens who seem liable to ask for more, demand more of those who hold dominion over their lives.

It turns his stomach, sends a sickening chill across the back of his neck –

'Nothing to contribute, Zuko? Do you take any issue with this plan?'

– but he says nothing.

* * *

'You're getting married.'

The declaration comes two weeks before he turns twenty four. His opinion is not asked for, and he makes no attempt to offer it. He asks who she is, where she is from, and what the purpose of their marriage will be.

'An alliance, Zuko. We are forming an alliance.'

His wife-to-be arrives a week later – the daughter of a Chief, Zuko's southern counterpart.

_Katara._

She steps through the doors, her eyes a startling blue against the reds and golds of the shrine, her back straight and head held high. The sake is shared, Zuko says the words he is required to say, and they are married.

'I hope you had some say in all this.'

He reassures her that he did.

(And almost laughs out loud at the absurdity of it, the sheer blatancy of his falseness.)

'This was my idea, you know. Not the alliance, of course, just the marriage part. I never really liked the idea of a political marriage, but I figured in this case I was making the decision for myself. And for my people. Well, _our_ people, I suppose. I've heard a lot about this place. I've wanted to come here for a while.'

Blue eyes look out appraisingly across the sprawl of the capital before turning to him, and he can almost hear the whirring of her mind beneath her words.

'We're in a position to help lead two of the most powerful lands in this world. We need to make sure we do it right.'

He's not sure what to say to that, so all he does is nod.

He wonders if she means that she knows, that she's aware of the brutality by which this nation is ruled, and that she believes her presence here might be able to change it somehow.

She certainly behaves as if she does.

He doesn't like her.

But he feels as if, in some strange way, he knows her. He _understands_ her. If only because all the qualities that bother him about his wife are ones he once believed he held himself, ones he has wished for years he could find the strength to wield once more.

Katara is obstinate and loud and difficult. She's smart – really smart, _dangerously_ smart – and all too thoroughly aware of it. She's irreverent of tradition ('just because that's how it's always been doesn't mean that's how it should stay'), unyielding in her principles, and has seemingly boundless reserves of confidence by which to make her opinions clear.

( _You made a mistake coming here_ , he wants to tell her, _if you plan to sing quite so loudly._ )

( _This is no place for a voice such as yours._ )

( _They will beat it from you, bleed you dry._ )

( _Be quiet._ )

( _Gods damn it, be quiet._ )

( _What will become of you if you don't?_ )

( _What will become of me?_ )

But he says nothing.

* * *

Somehow, by some manner that both fascinates and pains him, she isn't silenced in the same way that he was. Her opinions are respected – _sought out_ – by an astonishing majority of council members, and even those who dislike her seem to bear some grudging acceptance of her suggestions.

If he'd ever thought that such a thing could be possible, Zuko would never have expected it to taste quite so bitter. But bitter it is. Resentment towards her and her somehow rapt audience burns through him with every passing day; it stares him in the face every time he passes a mirror, creeps up the web of scarring that tugs across his back, fights him whenever he tries to choke it down past the stricture that tightens his chest.

( _How?_ )

( _How can you come here, to this place that cut my throat and stole my breath, and thrive?_ )

( _How dare you do what I never could?_ )

( _Stop talking._ )

( _Be quiet._ )

But he says nothing.

* * *

Is sitting silent the same as listening well?

He had always thought that it was, that in his inability to speak he might at least have found a capacity to hear others that bit more clearly.

But as time goes on, and the resentment towards his wife starts to dissipate into an uncomfortable, twitching kind of bafflement, it dawns on him that he really has no idea what she's actually been _saying_.

So, with no other option that he can see, he starts to listen.

Zuko listens, and –

( _Gods, you have been a fool. Such a fool._ )

– and now he's listening, it is no hard task to find the beauty in her voice; its rhythms, its cadences, the melodious spin of her laugh and the fierce dissonance of her anger. He barely has to open his ears to her before she comes bursting in, clean and fresh into him as a storm sweeping away the suffocating heat of summer.

Perhaps there are some things that are inevitable, and perhaps she's one of them.

'You can be more than this,' she says.

She clears the debris from his throat.

'You have more in you than this.'

She unsticks his tongue from the roof of his mouth.

'Speak.'

( _I have to do better_ , he thinks.)

'Speak.'

 _I have to be better_ , he thinks.

'Speak.'

'We have to do better,' he tells the council, his voice hoarse from disuse.

And Katara smiles as if it's the best sound in the world.

* * *

That night, when she moves as if to slip through the door from their common space to her private chambers, his grip tightens on her –

'Stay?'

\- and his hand finds its way to her hair, thumb brushing down the side of her neck -

'Please.'

– and she moves into his arms and lifts her fingers to his face, tracing the scar that stains it as if to say

_I will._

She is in this, as she is in all things, stunningly vocal. But the surprise, he finds, is that he is too.

His lips are more eloquent on hers than they have ever been in speech, his fingers saying more pressed against her skin and caught in the tangles of her hair than he could ever hope to find words for. He calls, and she responds, a dialogue of touch and movement that leaves him shaking and speechless but ringing, _resonating_ in a way that he's never experienced before.

He's spent so long feeling like he doesn't have the air to speak, but this is a whole new kind of breathlessness – one that sighs and shudders – and he couldn't be more willing to surrender. She can have his breath if she wants it.

* * *

He is twenty six years, six months, and two days old when their son is born.

Kazuto is loud, louder even than his mother, and Zuko feels every cry right down in the marrow of his bones.

'Hush, little one. Shout when you need to, but you have no need right now.'

* * *

He is twenty six years, six months, and three days old when the Lord announces his plan for the south.

'My son and his wife have produced an heir.'

'Once the girl's father and brother are out of the way, we will be in custody of the uncontested ruler of the southern lands.'

'Now we shall set the wheels in motion.'

And his lungs turn to stone.

He should've known.

He should've known that the Lord would never allow it, would never leave anyone like her to sing for long before striking them off their perch.

'Nothing to say, Zuko?'

Oh, he has plenty to say.

_How could you?_

_How could you let her think she was being heard_

_let her be loved_

_let me love her_

_knowing this was how things were going to end?_

_I will not stand for this._

( _I will not._ )

 _I will speak_.

( _Speak._ )

( _Speak, gods damn you._ )

But he says

nothing.

* * *

'Did you know?'

It's the only question Katara asks him, quiet and cold, when news reaches her of her family's slaughter. It's the only question that matters.

She doesn't talk to him after that, and he doesn't blame her in the slightest.

In the last thirteen years, the only time Zuko has used his voice for anything of worth was because of her. And then, when it really counted, when he had the chance to use it _for_ her, he failed.

He has remained silent, and people have been hurt, and people have been ruined, and that guilt is his to bear; his to make some attempt to atone for.

So when he catches his wife slipping out of the window of their quarters, her dark clothes almost invisible against the black of the night, their month-old son sleeping peacefully at her chest –

_Hush, little one. Please. Be quiet._

– he meets her eyes, he nods, he turns away –

_Go._

– and he says nothing.

This can be the one time that his silence does some good.

He figures he owes her that much.

**Author's Note:**

> I would say sorry, but like this is just the start so if I apologise now then I have nowhere to escalate to later.
> 
> On a serious note, I think in our current climate there's a lot to be said about finding our voices. I'm not going to get into the nitty-gritty of it all because there are reams and reams of things to unpack on the matter of trans rights and BLM and the many, many other issues going on in our world at the moment, but as I was writing this it felt very relevant to our time and I guess I wanted to highlight that.
> 
> Make sure you lift yourself after reading sad/serious stuff! Listen to something light-hearted, watch a sitcom, dance around your room, whatever gets you feeling happy!


End file.
